


The River's Daughter

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Magic, POV First Person, Post-Book(s), Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Yuletide 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8902432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: It was a cool, still evening late in harvest season the first time Agnieszka heard the song about the River's daughter.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redbells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbells/gifts).



> Written as a treat in Yuletide 2016. Set post-book, because your prompt of new legends growing around Agnieszka tangled up in my mind with a verse out of Tolkien. (Said verse quoted in the text below; not a crossover, just inspiration.)

It was a cool, still evening late in harvest season the first time I heard the song about the River's daughter. I knew from the first rhyming word that it would stick; it had roots in it, little feathery curls of playful warmth that would catch in listeners' hearts and spread humming leaves in the quiet moments for days afterward.

I was striding past the tavern in Dvernik when I heard it; the day was fading fast, layering the sky over the mountains in shades of burnt orange, rose pink, and slate blue as the mist spreading up from the Spindle caught the last rays of the sun. It seemed almost like a cheery, homespun blanket drawn over the valley, warding off the crisp breezes of oncoming autumn; the glow spilling from the tavern had seemed until that moment like just another part of the painting, a hearth-fire beckoning friendly travelers in to take their ease.

I was certainly that, even if I didn't belong there properly anymore. I paused near one of the windows for a moment, clutching the basket full of golden fruit I'd been carrying back to my cottage loosely in one hand, and let Baba Jaga's walking song slip from my tongue. The singer's voice was a pleasant tenor, and the faces of the villagers inside were all turned toward him, like young leaves reaching for the light. But despite my momentary worry, I could hear no corruption in the melody; only the gift of a bard born under the eaves of the Wood, stringing dancing phrases on a shimmering skein of bright notes.

 _"O slender as a willow-wand!"_ he sang;  
_"O clearer than clear water._  
_"O reed by the living pool. Fair River-daughter!_  
_"O spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!_  
_"O wind on the waterfall, and the leaves' laughter!"_

I shook my head as the song continued from there, verses running sparkling along the path of the Spindle: of Old Grey Willow-Man beside the bridge in Zatochek, the golden fruit whose flesh carried health and banished shadows, and the magical being in the blue coat who had always been there and always would be, carrying water lilies to the witch in her cottage.

I had to wonder if Sarkan had heard it yet. I smiled at that thought, imagining him with a basket of flowers in his hands to match my heart-tree fruit. If he'd meant to bring me flowers, it would have been thorny roses, never lilies, which symbolized humility in devotion in the court-language I'd barely learned the basics of during my time in Kralia; but whoever had written the song had clearly never met either of us. The Dragon may have let the valley's wild magic catch him in its net at last, after a century and more of shutting himself away in his tower, but he remained as contrary and reserved as ever.

His life at Court and in his ordered libraries and labs and mine dancing along the banks of the Spindle grew together, but only slowly; watered by hard work and willing determination, not a bard's dreams of fairytale romance. The meshing of our magic might have planted the seed, but it had taken more than courtly words and blushing glances to make it grow. But the truth didn't make for tales as grand as those already spreading throughout Polnya about Kasia Sword-Maiden, Alosha the wizard smith who armed her with magic weapons fit to slay any foe, and the King and Princess they defended from all who would harm them. Barefoot Agnieszka with the twigs in her hair and the aloof, prickly wizard known more for his smoke than his fire — who would sing of them?

My fond smile slipped a little as the song continued. The witch who was only herself, who frustrated the Naming spell and the regimented syllables of ordinary magic, who'd soothed the Wood-queen and her bitter anger to sleep when she would not burn: that girl laughed from the bard's words, but did not _live_ , distilled down to a slip of herself, something the listeners could grasp and applaud. Not Agnieszka, lover of Sarkan and beloved of Kasia; but Goldberry who lived by the river waiting for her wide-wandering suitor, taming the Wood and welcoming any who came to her for help.

It was a lovely piece of craft, certainly much kinder than many of the earlier songs. I'd heard the ones about the wolf-woman who'd eaten the king, and about the Wood-wight who'd sown thorn-seeds of corruption throughout Kralia and drank thousands of soldier's lives before she was defeated, in a thousand variations by now. Killed by Solya, casting a magic arrow; imprisoned by Sarkan in a ring of flame; or slain by Prince Marek with his dying breath. What harm, then, in a laughing rhyme designed to dispel fear rather than spread it? Even if it did presume to Name me anew.

For a breath, the weight of the future pressed down on me again; the weary detachment I'd seen in Alosha speaking of her great-great-grandchildren, the frozen distance Sarkan had hid behind before I'd managed to crack it, poor Ballo's head full of books rather than people. How many years would pass before no-one remembered me by _my_ original name, either? I'd take up the Wood's invitation, I thought, before it got that far; Kasia and I both. We'd discussed it by letter, the resilient green-wood strength of my best friend's altered body, the magic that filled me up like a cup, and the way we'd rather grow peacefully together in one another's arms for eternity rather than crack and curdle in bitter old age.

But that day was not today; and wouldn't be so long as Sarkan lived, I suspected. I looked away from the window, glancing up toward the spire of the Dragon's tower in the distance, and felt the warmth of the fire we could kindle together even from that distance. From ogre in his den, to mentor, twig to my leaf, and finally learning to hum along to the valley's humble tunes, he'd always been impossible; but the sort of impossible that was an invitation, just as much as the one I'd been offered in the heart-tree grove.

Perhaps I wouldn't go back to my cottage that night after all. I could already imagine the way his eyes would brighten when I sung him the song; the wry words of sarcasm he would press against my indignant mouth. I glanced down at the basket of fruit, then stooped to pluck a strand of faded grass and muttered _vanastalem_ under my breath, dressing it up into a bouquet of lilies as bright and improbable as the dress the cantrip made of my worn clothes.

I laughed at the picture I presented, shaking off the brief grey mood, then abandoned my stroll to curl my tongue around the words of Sarkan's valley-transport spell. It wouldn't preserve my newly presentable appearance any more than anything else I ever tried, but it would at least reduce the number of stains, scratches and snags that would otherwise befall me along the way.

Sarkan looked up as I snapped into being in the tower library, a surprised frown beetling his brow. There was dust on his hands from the books and rough fuzz along the edge of his chin, a clear sign he hadn't been expecting me that evening, but he otherwise presented as noble a picture as ever. But then his gaze caught on the basket, and his eyebrows rose.

"Dressing those up with flowers won't make them any less appalling," he tsked, shaking his head.

"I don't know; I think the tower would look pretty with a ring of heart-trees around it," I told him playfully, swinging the basket up onto the table next to his book. "All the glittering lines of script where we folded the siege walls up to repair all the damage; the silvery leaves would set them off like jewels."

"Sounds perfectly horrifying," he grumped; but I could see the wry smile growing at the back of his eyes, the willingness to be coaxed away from his evening's contemplations. He might have as smooth a face as any villager in his twenties, but the lines around his eyes belonged to a much older man, and they were very expressive to one who'd learned how to read them.

I held out a hand over the table, smiling back at him. "Maybe just one, then?"

He reached to link his fingers through mine without the least hesitation, my work-roughened palm scraping against his sword calluses, and when I murmured _vadiya rusha ilikad tuhi_ , he took up my usual descant part with barely a stumble. The valley's magic was as awkward on his tongue as his was on mine, but balanced in counterpoint all the same; like us, like the illusion we wove together.

The valley rose up out of the surface of the table, following the line of the Spindle like the painting that once hung in my chamber; trees like fine hairs sprouted along its length. But it didn't mirror the valley as it stood now; it showed what I imagined it _could_ be in another hundred years. More towns nestled under the eaves of the Wood, full of happy villagers; a spire of silver, full-grown, next to the shining white tower on its verge. Complementary in their opposites; content. 

Sarkan dropped the spell, our magic tangling warmly between us, and pushed the table hastily out of the way.

Somewhere in the distance, the song continued.


End file.
